Save yourself money and time, UX is not UI

So, recently, I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of job searching. The good thing is that there are WAY more UI/UX positions available today then 3 years ago. The bad thing is that most of them only really want UI Designers, and they don’t know it.

But why is that bad? I mean, won’t someone just do the job?

Yes, they can. I can. However, setting and keeping expectations at the beginning is huge in keeping an employee happy. When you imply one thing, and don’t understand the full implication of what you’re implying, people get upset, underperform, and leave after a short time. Nobody wants that, especially the employer who loses talent and money.

So, let me clear up what the difference is, so when jobs gets posted, someone will give an HR person the right info to get the employee you really want. Here’s the best way to imagine it:

Think of riding a horse.

UI is the saddle, the stirrups, and the reigns.

UX is the feeling you get being able to ride the
horse, and rope your cattle.

Jesse James Garret

So, if you want someone who is going to help you work on your entire product strategy, to coordinate with engineering and marketing and sales, who is going to help you test your software iterations, and follow-up with your happy customers, you want someone in charge of UX, or your User Experience.

If you want someone to design your webpages, you want a UI Designer.

If you want to know more, here is my deck from a recent talk I gave on UX and UI.